Biz Break: HP's turnaround not coming quickly

Today: CEO Meg Whitman says Hewlett-Packard is on course, but company announces more layoffs as quarterly sales and revenue decline again. Also: Yelp gets a boost from videos.

HP earnings remain lackluster

Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman says her plan to change course for the troubled computer giant remains on track, but her effort is looking less like a U-turn and more like a painfully slow, 17-point turn.

The Palo Alto company reported second-quarter earnings Thursday that fell below analysts' expectations, sending shares sliding. While HP's profit rose 18 percent, sales fell and revenue came in at $27.31 billion, 1 percent below the $27.43 billion that Wall Street had hoped for. HP also announced 11,000 to 16,000 more layoffs in addition to the cutting of 34,000 workers worldwide as part of a massive restructuring plan that was first announced in 2012.

HP has been badly hurt by the global shift toward smartphones and cloud computing at the expense of PCs and printers, and appears headed toward a third straight year of sales declines. Some experts question whether HP can ever really recover: "I don't know that we've seen much that makes one feel that they can actually grow again," Evercore Partners analyst Rob Cihra told Bloomberg News, while noting that at least Whitman had stopped the bleeding. "The company was falling apart. They've shored that up."

The company also adjusted its third-quarter forecast to profits of 86 cents to 90 cents a share; Wall Street had estimated 90 cents.

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"With the first half of our fiscal year completed, I'm pleased to report that HP's turnaround remains on track," Whitman said in a statement. "We're gradually shaping HP into a more nimble, lower-cost, more customer- and partner-centric company that can successfully compete across a rapidly changing IT landscape."

HP's earnings were unexpectedly announced before the closing bell, sending shares down 2.28 percent, or 74 cents, to $31.78; they dipped an additional 1.3 percent in after-hours trading as of 3 p.m. Pacific time. Still, its shares are up 14 percent this year.

The markets made minimal gains Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq rising the most, up 22.80, or 0.55 percent.

After shooting up more than $1 a share in the morning after announcing new user-friendly privacy settings, Menlo Park social media giant Facebook floated back to earth after its annual shareholders meeting to end the day nearly where it started, with gains of just 3 cents, or 0.05 percent, to $60.52.

San Francisco-based review site Yelp jumped nearly 5 percent, or $2.78, to $60.40, after announcing it would add a feature allowing users to upload videos with their reviews.

Google rose 1 percent, or $5.75, to $555.45, after announcing it would not charge content companies more for faster connections on its Google Fiber high-speed Internet service. The Mountain View Internet giant also added the ability to use "OK Google" voice commands on desktop versions of its Chrome browser.

Cupertino tech giant Apple rose 96 cents, or 0.16 percent to $607.27, after announcing a fix to a bug that had prevented former iPhone users from accessing iMessage texts after they had switched to Android phones.

San Jose e-commerce pioneer eBay fell 38 cents, or 0.73 percent, to $51.50 a day after announcing its user database had been hacked.

And the widely watched Standard & Poor's 500 index: Up 4.46, or 0.24 percent, to 1,892.49.

Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Follow Mike Murphy at twitter.com/mmmmurf.